Doing the Reader’s Cup has been a lot of hard work and time spent for everyone.  We started in March when we were given five books for the Regional Competition held at Rangitoto College.  It was a privilege to be able to participate in the competition.  At the end of the night, our hard work paid off and we won by 2 points. 

It was then another two months of reading six new books and taking notes until the Nationals, held at Dilworth Senior College on the 20 September.  We were one team out of 11 from all across the country, at table one no less – a good omen.  The teams were from Whangarei to Queenstown.  After a wonderful lunch and an intense competition, we took the victory by half a point, after coming third for most of the competition.

And like all good stories, we end with acknowledgements.  Thank you to Mrs Taylor, our previous librarian, for putting together our awesome team and helping us with the North Shore Regionals, and the Year 10 students who mentored us for that.  To our parents, especially Taliah (Meila’s mum) for reading the books and coming up with questions to test our knowledge.  Thank you to Mrs Bailey, our new librarian, for organising us to go to the Nationals and making sure we were prepared with our books.  To the seniors who put up with us practising in the library twice a week while they were studying for mocks and to all the librarians around the country who helped make this achievement a reality.  Finally to all the other teams who provided such stiff competition, thank you all for helping us reach this incredible result; we couldn’t have done this without you. 

The Year 9 Reader’s Cup Team – Gigi Albrecht, Maya Timlin, Meila Oosterdijk, Romy Lee and Yu Na Lim